The Healthy Tip Corner

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Adding A Little Buzz, Like The MackinVIA Widget, To The Front Page Of Destiny

This weekend one of my friends asked me to give her directions on how to add content to a Destiny homepage. On the Van Meter School Destiny homepage, I have text, a scrolling marque, and also the MackinVIA widget, which takes users straight to the MackinVIA website.

This was very easy to do....but only because someone once shared the directions and HTML code with me. So here it is....

You will need to log into your Destiny as the "Destiny Administrator." On the "Home Page," you will find "Edit Page" in the right hand corner. Click on this and it will take you to "Edit Home Page."

The first line will be "Introductory Text." To the right of that there are three buttons, "Add Group," "Add Link," and "Edit Introductory Text." You will click on the last one, "Edit Introductory Text."

On this page, you will be able to add a "Title" and "Body". Within the body, you can add text and HTML code. I have taken the exact HTML code from the Van Meter Destiny page and pasted it below. You can use this to create your homepage too. Just go through the HTML code and change the words to match what you want for your Destiny homepage.

You also might be asking where to get HTML code from. You can get it from various websites that might have widgets you can add to your sites. Also, when you create digital products, such as an Animoto video or Smore flyter, you can copy the HTML that they provide when you have completed a project and paste that into such places as well. Even YouTube provides HTML for videos. It is very simple to do.

This is where I found the MackinVIA widget HTML.

On the Mackin website, under the "My Mackin" tab, go to "My Mackin VIA" to "Settings".

Under "Mackin VIA Settings", you will see "VIA Widget". When you click on "Get VIA Widget" it will give you an image and the HTML code for that widget image. You will need to copy the HTML to take it over to the Destiny website or any other place you want to add the MackinVIA widget. You just paste it into the space provided.

I not only added the MackinVIA widget to the Van Meter Destiny home page, I also added it to the Van Meter Library Voice blog and

Van Meter Library Google Site. Anywhere that my patrons will be online, I add the MackinVIA widget so they have constant access to our eBook library at Van Meter.

By adding widgets such as MackinVIA to various online library spaces, we are giving our school community access to the library digitally as well.

Please let me know if you have any questions. I would be happy to help you add them to your online spaces too.